June 3 street date. (LP includes full album download) Modern Country guests include Glenn Kotche (Wilco) and members of Megafaun (Brad Cook & Phil Cook) Modern Country is the fourth full-length album by guitarist and composer William Tyler and his first recorded outside of his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. It features an ensemble backing group consisting of multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook (Hiss Golden Messenger, Blind Boys of Alabama), bassist Darin Gray (Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke), and percussionist Glenn Kotche (Wilco). The album was tracked at April Base Studios in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and finished in Nashville, recorded and mixed by Jon Ashley, and produced by Tyler and Brad Cook. While there is never a comfort zone in instrumental music, Tyler attempts to leave any perceived one behind with Modern Country. His first album for Merge, 2013’s Impossible Truth, found Tyler exploring the boundaries of composition for solo guitar in a manner that paid homage to everyone from Leo Kottke to Brian Wilson. It was an epic song cycle that veered from cathedral-like psychedelic hymns to pastoral folk melodies. In contrast, Modern Country finds Tyler exploring more focused melodic themes rather than ethereal wanderings. These aren’t pop songs, per se, but they are closer in spirit to Neu!, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and Bill Frisell. Primarily written while Tyler was on sabbatical in Oxford, Mississippi, where he stayed at the cabin of a family friend within a stone’s throw of William Faulkner’s house, Modern Country is a collection of songs about the vanishing America that still exists on back roads, in small towns, on AM radio stations. In an election year when so many certainties and assurances have vanished, Tyler doesn’t offer optimism or pessimism but rather a calm and measured commentary in our age of anxiety. Impossible Truth was rated Best of 2013 by publications such as NPR Music, The New Yorker, New York Magazine (Folk), Buzzfeed (Folk), Uncut, Spin.

Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!

January 29 street date. Available on 2CD & LP with download code. North Carolina’s Benji Hughes fronted a rock band in the nineties. He’s written commercial jingles (“Got a Little Captain in You?” for Captain Morgan rum). He’s made music for film and television (Walk Hard, Eastbound & Down). He released 2008’s A Love Extreme, his excellent double-LP debut record. But these ventures aren’t different hats Hughes wears. They’re not different paths traveled. This is Hughes playing in different keys. Now, for his first full-length on Merge, Benji Hughes is playing Songs in the Key of Animals. Recorded over two years mostly at Frisbie studios in New York, the record is 41 minutes of pop-music exploration. The album has a summertime immediacy but an evergreen resonance (see “Longshot”). It’s clever but too deep for punchlines (check the excellent back and forth of (“Picnic”). It is sincere (“Girls Love Shoes”) yet heartbreaking (“Song for Nancy”). It’s eccentric but never forced in its strangeness. It’s the kind of record that reminds us music can be fun without being empty. It’s an album full of peacocks and sharks and zebras and tigers, but ultimately, it’s about us. “People are animals,” Hughes says, “even if some people don’t want to admit it.” Songs in the Key of Animals taps into something beyond just intellect or trend or taste. It’s all about the feel, the connection between the player, the music, and the listener. “Pure enthusiastic songwriting from a man who clearly does not care what I think about his work.” --CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!

May 27 street date. Mercury-Prize Nominee King Creosote and Skydiggers’ Michael Johnston have forged a unique musical partnership. “The Bound Of The Red Deer," their ten-song collaborative debut, is informed by ten years of change, friendship, travel and long-distance correspondence. Recorded in Toronto by Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre), “The Bound Of The Red Deer” is a collection of heartfelt songs anchored by acoustic guitar, piano, ambient textures and an endearing vocal blend of Scots/Canadian accents. King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) and Michael met in 2006 at a songwriter's retreat in Scotland. They hit it off quickly, and wrote two songs in as many hours. Along with six of the other musicians at the retreat, they formed a band called The Burns Unit. The Burns Unit released one album, named #2 folk album of the year by MOJO magazine, and performed on the Jools Holland show. After the band amicably split in 2012, Kenny and Michael set to completing songs that would become “The Bound Of The Red Deer." Included on the album the earliest songs they wrote together, alongside collaborations with Karine Polwart and Emma Pollock (of the Delgados), and musical contributions from Texas musician Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams). In May and June 2016, King Creosote and Michael Johnston will perform their first duo shows in over four years to celebrate the long-awaited release of “The Bound Of The Red Deer." “I love the deep humour and harmony, the pathos and the charm. These songs stand out like beams of light on a misty dark night..." – Chris Difford, Squeeze -About King Creosote- Based in the small fishing village of Crail (Fife) in Scotland, King Creosote is one of the UK's most powerful and influential voices of the 21st century. King Creosote's 2011 recording, "Diamond Mine" (recorded with Jon Hopkins) was nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize, the UK's most prestigious music prize. King Creosote has attracted celebrity fans including Coldplay, Elton John (who once bought six copies of his new album to give out to friends) and author Ian Rankin. His 2014 album, "From Scotland With Love," was the soundtrack to a feature documentary film of the same name, and reached #21 on the UK charts. -About Michael Johnston- Based in Toronto, Ontario, Michael Johnston is one of Canada's best loved musicians: an enthusiastic collaborator, gifted performer and dedicated teacher. Michael has appeared on over 45 recordings as a keyboardist, vocalist, songwriter and/or producer. He has toured, written and recorded with Juno-winning group the Skydiggers since 2006, and has worked with a who's who of the Canadian scene including Joel Plaskett, Serena Ryder, Ron Sexsmith and Jim Cuddy.

June 1 street date.The events of May 1968 are seen as a turning point in France's social history - pictures of the barricades are still potent images. Lines were drawn politically, culturally, socially, and pop music was not exempt. "Paris In The Spring" is a collection of the new music, put together by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, that emerged from France between 1968 and the mid-70s, an extraordinary blend of several previously independent strains - French chanson and yé-yé, American jazz and funk, British chamber pop - shot through with the era's underlying mixture of optimism, uncertainty and darkness. This is the first collection of its kind, released on the 50th anniversary of the Paris uprising. Artists include Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc, Jane Birkin, Jean-Calude Vannier, Michel Polnareff, Francoise Hardy, Triangle, and many more.

July 13 street date. Willie Nelson was a struggling songwriter, hungry for work and maybe even just plain hungry, when he moved to Nashville in late 1960 with his wife and kids and became a songwriter for Pamper Music. Pamper, which was owned by country star Ray Price, fiddle player Hal Smith, and a baker (!) from Pico Rivera, California named Claude Caviness, was the hottest publishing company in town, thanks to writers like Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard and songs like “Heartaches by the Number” and “I Fall to Pieces.” The result: a body of work that just may well represent the most fertile creative period ever to issue from a country songwriter. The songs Willie recorded for Pamper during the early ‘60s remain among his most famous, and include tunes he still performs to this day: “Crazy,” “Funny (How Time Slips Away),’ “Night Life,” “Pretty Paper,” “Half a Man,” “Hello Walls,” “Healing Hands of Time,” and more. And these, the Pamper demos, are the first recordings of those legendary songs. For some reason, these demos have only turned up in bits and pieces, mostly on budget packages with little documentation or care. Now, finally, these incredibly important recordings are getting the respect they deserve. Things to Remember—The Pamper Demos brings together these 28 performances for the first time (several of which have hitherto eluded compilation), all remastered by Mike Milchner at SonicVision and annotated by Grammy-winning writer Colin Escott, with photos courtesy of Bear Family label founder Richard Weize. Available from Real Gone Music as a CD or a gatefold, red vinyl double-LP limited to 1000 copies, this collection is indispensable for any Willie Nelson fan or any lover of great country music.

Available now. (Now LOWER in price!!) Bruce Haack's biggest album!! An electronic psych-pop masterpiece!! Originally released in 1970 on Columbia Records! Canadian Bruce Haack is known as a pioneer within the world of electronic music, and basically invented the genre as we now know it. Telephone Explosion was honored to be able to release "Electric Lucifer Book II" in 2014 and "Haackula" in 2015. These were so successful that we decided to keep things moving and reissue Haack's original masterpiece. "The Electric Lucifer" is an immersive experience. At times heady, quirky, dark and flat-out funny, this is an album that is revered by many of the most influential artists in the musical landscape.

Please note: new street date is March 9. Self Hypnosis: Control Your Addiction to Television, Screens & Media. (Includes download) Keep your eye on the prize!! This tape will help keep you focused during this new era of infectious social media & constant digital distractions. "Are you tired of working on a computer all day long, only to go home and stare at more screens? Perhaps you know someone who is chronically distracted by digital detritus, and you wish to make a point by giving them this tape as a passive-aggressive gift?... Whatever the case may be, this tape functions as a cure-all for any screen-related distractions which you and your loved ones may be facing!” SIDE A is a sincere 23 minute guided HYPNOSIS session, featuring customized binaural tones, ASMR sound and cleansing subliminal massages. SIDE B features the therapeutic soundscapes without the voice. Break the spell of addictive digital distractions, and reclaim your personal space, time & clarity. Get the most out of your life. Listen to this tape. Take back your autonomy. Take a deep breath in. Smile. For fans of: Getting stuff done, technology, entertainment, videogames, Reveen, Marshall McLuhan, The Hip Hypnotist, Tony Robbins, Stockhausen, Edgar Cayce, W. Reich, Luc Ferrari, Aldous Huxley, Xenakis, Dr. Brule, Dr. Spock, Spock, Shatner, Tim Leary, Pierre Schaeffer, Terence McKenna, Gregg Turkington, Robert Anton WIlson, Ivor Cutler, William Burroughs, ASMR, GRM, DMT, Key of Z, Mr.T.